Question: You have found the following ages (in years) of 6 snakes. The snakes are randomly selected from the 33 snakes at your local zoo: $ 1,\enspace 22,\enspace 12,\enspace 11,\enspace 24,\enspace 10$ Based on your sample, what is the average age of the snakes? What is the variance? You may round your answers to the nearest tenth.
Because we only have data for a small sample of the 33 snakes, we are only able to estimate the population mean and variance by finding the sample mean $({\overline{x}})$ and sample variance $({s^2})$ To find the sample mean , add up the values of all $6$ samples and divide by $6$ $ {\overline{x}} = \dfrac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^{{n}} x_i}{{n}} = \dfrac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^{{6}} x_i}{{6$ To compensate for this underestimation, rather than simply averaging the squared deviations from the mean , we total them and divide by $n - 1$ $ {s^2} = \dfrac{\sum\limits_{i=1}^{{n}} (x_i - {\overline{x}})^2}{{n - 1}} $ $ {s^2} = \dfrac{{151.29} + {75.69} + {1.69} + {5.29} + {114.49} + {10.89}} {{6 - 1}} $ $ {s^2} = \dfrac{{359.34}}{{5}} = {71.87\text{ years}^2} $ We can estimate that the average snake at the zoo is 13.3 years old. There is a variance of 71.87 years $^2$.